The reading slump that I expected to hit in August is finally here. Everything I read in September was fine, but nothing landed the way I hoped it would. I can’t tell if that’s because of the slump or if the slump made even excellent books just seem fine – it’s a real chicken vs. egg situation!
That said, my daily reading streak is still alive, and I managed to get my brain back into audiobooks, so September wasn’t a total flop. Here’s what I read:
📘 The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen
This collection of short stories is one of my Mount TBR reads for the year. I can’t remember why or when I bought it, but I picked it up because I was watching a Dimension 20 season that put me in the mood for more twisted fairy tales. I’m not totally sure what to say about this one. Like many collections, some stories landed, and others weren’t as interesting. My favorite was one where Wendy starts a labor revolution in Neverland – a hilarious idea that was perfectly executed.
📘 Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan
I impulsively bought this book at Target right as I felt the reading slump coming on, hoping that a dash of romantasy would help me course correct… and it almost worked! As Rae is dying of cancer, she’s offered a magical bargain – enter the world of her favorite fantasy series and complete a quest to save her own life. When she wakes up, she discovers she’s the villainess of the story… yikes! This book was a lot of fun, a very potent mixture of romantasy tropes and fantasy metafiction that explores what it means to take control of our own stories. If you’re a recovering English major or just like talking about romantasy, this one will probably be fun for you.
📘 The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
I love Lev Grossman, so I was really looking forward to this book. Set in the world of King Arthur, it begins with a young knight named Collum, who arrives at Camelot too late – King Arthur has died, and only a handful of knights are left. The book follows the various left-behind knights in their quests, showing how they came to Camelot and what they tried to build after. I flew through about half of this book over Labor Day weekend but then dragged my heels to finish the rest over the rest of the month. I can see why the book is getting raves, but it just didn’t quite land for me.
🎧 The Grandest Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
This is another book I had high hopes for after loving The Inheritance Games trilogy. Set after the events of the first trilogy, this book is about the Grandest Game, an annual competition put together by Avery Grambs and the Hawthorne brothers. The setup of this one was fun, as expected, but the execution dragged a bit for me… it felt like it was missing a little bit of the sparkle and fun the original trilogy managed to have. That said, I’m curious to see where the mystery goes in the next book!
📘 What Kind of Woman: Poems by Kate Baer
I read this collection – a short book in a new genre – in an attempt to break my slump before it settled in. In these poems, Kate Baer captures some incisive experiences of being a woman, being in relationships, and living in the world in 2020. In some ways, I think the book might have hit me differently if I’d read it when it was first published, but it’s all still very relevant today. I can imagine re-reading this one in the future to capture some of the nuances I missed this time.
📘 Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods by Lyndsie Bourgon
Another slump-busting technique is switching genres entirely. My nonfiction reading has been slow this year, so I thought a dose of narrative nonfiction might be a good intervention. This book explores the “underbelly of the illegal timber market” by following three contemporary cases through the courts. It also dives into the history of the environmental movement, the tense relationship between the federal government and rural communities, and the environmental impact of timber poaching. I appreciated the high level of journalism in this book and the way it explored a topic I knew nothing about.
Final Thoughts
Despite being in a reading slump, my daily reading streak is still alive — I hit 100 days on October 6! Some days it’s only been a few pages or a few minutes, but even just choosing a book before bed instead of watching TV has been helpful.
So far, none of my usual slump-busting strategies have been successful, but I’m not feeling too worried about it just yet. Given everything going on in the world, I am not entirely surprised that it’s been harder to get into that mental space of getting lost with a good book.
That said, I am curious how you approach a reading slump — do you have any genres or reading rituals that help you get back in the zone when reading feels hard?
Well…. I have had times when everything I picked up turned into a DNF. But I’d seek out something else from the house bookshelf, my Kindle or something appealing from my Goodreads list and request it. That’s not fantastic advice but that’s what I do & eventually something grabs me.
I hear ya about the state of the world. Hurricane Milton is scary, I have a brother-in-law in Tampa who decided to stay, the political arena- ugh!